School safety: Experts differ on who should be armed in schools

JIM RYDBOM/jrydbom@greeleytribune.com
Garretson's Sports Center employee Drew Voos, right and store owner Zeke Garretson chat with Matt Cummins while in the gun department on Friday. Gun sales have recently increased with new guns laws that may be pending in the near future.

JIM RYDBOM/jrydbom@greeleytribune.com
Garretson's Sports Center owner Zeke Garretson, right, talks with Matt Cummins, left, and Jeff Berryman about a variety of hand guns at his store located at 3817 West 10th Street in Greeley on Friday. There has been a surge in gun sales in the United States as gun-control legislation looms on the horizon.

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Area law enforcement and school officials might agree on some aspects of the National Rifle Association’s call to arm schools, but how to do it is up for debate.

Past and present law enforcement officials, some of whom now work directly with local school safety, reacted this week to NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre’s comments that putting more guns in society would provide better security and armed guards should be employed in every school.

“I don’t agree with everything LaPierre said, but I do believe the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” said Ed Clark, University Schools safety and security director. “I haven’t thought it through completely, but I don’t agree with putting a weapon in the hands of someone around kids just to have armed security.”

Clark has been an armed security presence at University, a K-12 charter school in west Greeley, since 2006. He served as a military police officer before working on both the Evans and Greeley police forces.

He said a lot of thought has to go into who is holding a gun around children, and he does not believe it is just as simple as training someone who is willing. He said he’s not even comfortable with most armed security guards because most are at the beginning of their careers and don’t have the experience needed to carry a gun around children.

“If you’re going to put armed guards in schools, you have to make sure they can make good-quality decisions and have high-quality training,” Clark said.

John Gates, director of safety and security for Greeley-Evans School District 6, agreed, adding that level of training is something equal to a police officer. Gates is also a retired Greeley police officer, serving 25 years with the department.

All Greeley high schools have a full-time school resource officer, which is an on-duty, uniformed and armed Greeley police officer. The city pays for the officers. In addition, two more float between the middle schools. Gates said the district also employs plain-clothed, unarmed security guards.

“It is a high standard to meet with regard to firearms qualifications,” Gates said. “I can’t just take my people out to the range for a couple of hours, nor would I want to.”

Gates and Clark said training someone to shoot a gun is one thing, but making good decisions on when to pull a gun with hundreds of children around becomes more complicated.

Clark has pulled his gun while at University. Clark said he pulled his gun on a known gang member in 2007 who drove two girls from Greeley West High School to University for a fight. The 18-year-old drove toward Clark to strike him, so he pointed his gun at the driver and ordered him to stop. Clark put him in handcuffs and called the police without incident.

“If I take my gun out, I have to be ready to use it,” Clark said. “And if you use it, you have to be able to do so without putting those students at further risk. If given that responsibility, you have to use it responsibly.”

Gates said one’s stress level increases immensely when children are around.

“You absolutely have to be ready to use it,” Gates said. “And anytime someone pulls a weapon, the stress level goes up. Exacerbate that with a classroom full of students. It’s different protecting your home — you have just yourself and your family to protect — but say it’s Greeley West, the largest school we have, you now have 1,600 students and 100 faculty members to protect also. Most just don’t know how to handle that. What kind of mayhem do we have if everybody’s armed?”

Weld County Sheriff John Cooke and Greeley police Chief Jerry Garner both believe that many people, including teachers, would be able to handle the responsibility given the right weapons training.

“If a teacher or principal wants to be armed, send them through training and let them,” Cooke said. “How much training depends on the individual. There are some teachers out there who have never handled a gun, but there are a lot who have. You’d be surprised how many have concealed weapons permits already. I don’t want to make it mandatory, but if a teacher says, ‘I want to carry (a gun) to protect my class,’ they should be able to.”

Garner said schools are vulnerable because bad guys know they will be met with little resistance.

“It certainly doesn’t make them any safer,” he said about advertising “gun-free” zones. “What we’ve seen with these deranged shooters is they are not so deranged that they looking for a place to shoot up that is secured with police officers.”

Garner said if an employee of a school is willing to take on the added responsibility and meets the qualifications for a concealed weapons permit, he is comfortable with that so long as the level of training required is met.

“To just hang guns on everybody for the sake of hanging guns on them to make it safer will probably make it more dangerous,” Garner said. “I think the key is in the individual teacher, and it includes constant training. But that alone may serve as a deterrent for some. A huge amount of it is finding individuals to undergo the necessary and continuing training, and there are not a great number of people who are willing to do that.”

To just hang guns on everybody for the sake of hanging guns on them to make it safer will probably make it more dangerous. I think the key is in the individual teacher, and it includes constant training. But that alone may serve as a deterrent for some. A huge amount of it is finding individuals to undergo the necessary and continuing training, and there are not a great number of people who are willing to do that. — Jerry Garner, Greeley police chief